In 2006, we slapped a roll bar into a $455 Oldsmobile Aurora, buckled on open-faced helmets, formed a team out of office nitwits, and went racing. Well, it wasn’t strictly racing—more like half racing, half demolition derby, half Ben-Hur chariot scene. When that first 24 Hours of LeMons was over, we left what little remained of the Aurora at the track for a junk collector. At the time, nobody, not even race organ­izer Jay Lamm, realized that there was a big future in races for $500 cars.

For an activity that began, in Lamm’s words, as a “parody of racing,” it has undergone a profound evolution. From that first event on the 0.3-mile bullring at Altamont, California, the series has advanced to prestigious tracks such as Sonoma Raceway (the former Sears Point) in California, and Sebring, the same Flori­da circuit that hosts sports-car racing’s annual 12-hour classic. The speeds are higher now, as are the risks and the costs of mitigating those risks. In short, just as stock-car racing went from a beach frolic to a billion-dollar business with an “official chocolate” sponsor (M&Ms), LeMons is becoming much more serious about racing. As it does, though, it has to work even harder to laugh at the sport it intends to lampoon.

Phil Greden, better known as Judge Phil, the head of the LeMons judiciary, parses the series’ evolution into three epochs, each advancing both the racing and the absurdity. Through the first few years, he says, the cars were disposable and the racing violent, with lots of on-track contact. In 2009 and ’10, the culture around the series grew. Cars that had no business being on a race course gained a following, and team themes expanded from mere costumes to wildly decorated cars. As roll cages got more elaborate [see “Cage Match” below] and more expensive, people held on to their cars for multiple races.

Cage Match

Nowhere have the increasingly stringent rules governing safety in LeMons been more evident than in its roll-cage regulations. There have been four basic roll-cage specs, detailed below.

Lamm and his cohorts try to keep the series regulations to a minimum. The 2014 rulebook comes to about 10 printed pages, in contrast to the SCCA’s, which runs to more than 800. Nevertheless, Lamm and crew have beefed up safety-equipment requirements. Helmets were the only driver-safety gear required in the first two races, and some competitors drove in shorts and T-shirts. The rules now require SFI- or FIA-rated racing seatbelts (five- or six-point), and Nomex driver suits, underwear, gloves, and shoes. LeMons also mandated an SFI-/FIA-rated racing seat in 2011, and drivers must wear a foam cervical collar. LeMons does not require a HANS device, though it’s recommended.

According to Greden, the modern era of LeMons started to take shape in 2011, and since then, the quality of both the racing and the wild mechanical fabrication has intensified. Now, he says, “teams with great organization, debugged cars, and fast drivers dominate the top of the standings.” As competitors have grown more serious, Greden finds himself applying fewer of the ridiculous penalties that helped to establish the series’ character. The Arc Angel, a woman clad in white overalls and wings who welded various steel silhouettes (e.g., mating bunnies) to car roofs, has disappeared from the series, and the “People’s Curse,” in which organizers destroyed the car other racers voted to demolish, is no more. In the early seasons, when the cars were actually cheap, that was a lot easier to stomach. Now that roll cages cost a few grand, there hasn’t been a major People’s Curse since 2009.

Still, sore losers remain a problem. “A handful [of racers] want to win or they’re pissed off,” says Lamm. Indeed, some have even defected to the SCCA, an entity more welcoming of the self-serious. Lamm says: “You can’t make everybody happy, so it’s important for us not to lose focus and try to appease the angry trophy addict. People like that should race somewhere else.”

What began as a one-time joke has expanded into a season with as many races as some professional series. In February, LeMons ran its first sprint race, a two-hour event in California.

The Key to Success: A Volvo 240?

Eight seasons and 104 races have pretty well established which cars make good LeMons racers. Here, courtesy of Judge Phil and Eric Rood of Hooniverse.com, are the 10 cars most likely to stay alive from the green flag to the checkered.

Even if nobody is dismantling cars with earth-moving equipment anymore, the spirit of LeMons is stronger than ever. Actually, the Spirit of LeMons [above] is an old Cessna fuselage mounted to a Toyota van chassis and was entered in a 2013 Carolina Motorsports Park race. Here are a few of our favorite creations:

The Homer
Based on an E30 BMW 3-series, this LeMon pays homage to a car designed by Homer in an early episode of The Simpsons.

Upside-Down Camaro
Jeff Bloch, a.k.a. SpeedyCop, builder of the Spirit of LeMons, dropped this bomb a few months after the airplane. Underneath, it’s a Ford Festiva.

Team First-Blood GMC Sonoma
At the 2008 LeMons race in Toledo, Ohio, this triple-axle Sonoma won awards for both the most-loved and most-loathed vehicle.

Nutjob Racing Air-Stairs
Not only did Nutjob Racing transform their Honda Civic into the stair car from the TV series Arrested Development, they also drove it to Chicago from NYC.